Editor’s note: this is a detailed discussion of the film and, as such, it contains spoilers.
By Keri O’Shea
Sometimes, the luck of the draw can be a bitch.
Emerging onto the horror movie scene in close proximity during the late Eighties came two, in some ways very similar, sets of demonic entities; in each case, these entities were inert and unknown – or else shadowy rumours only – until called forth by mortal man; in each case, the embodied creature(s) could only move around on Earth once certain conditions had been fulfilled and in each case, these creatures would return to obscurity only once their bloodlust was successfully sated. The earlier film and its demonic beings, Hellraiser, became a franchise, its denizens now widely-regarded as canonical classic monsters; the second film, Pumpkinhead, despite being a modest hit now well-beloved of a hardcore of fans, is far, far less well-known. This is surely an accident of cinematic history. Despite the gloaming brilliance of Hellraiser (and I have previously spoken at length about the film here at Brutal as Hell) the directorial début of scene legend Stan Winston deserves far more credit than it tends to receive. Not only does it provide its own mythos, rending reality in the creative way which good horror must, but it does so from a deeply humane starting point. Unlike the debased, decadent Frank Cotton, the man responsible for summoning the beast of vengeance, Pumpkinhead, is a good man. Not only is he a good man, he’s a grieving man. At the heart of Pumpkinhead is a father, a son, and a tragedy.
What would you do if the one thing, the only thing in your life which you loved, was taken from you – and not just taken from you, torn from you? Perhaps via a senseless killing, an accident so mediocre it could almost be laughable, or a random act of stupidity? It happens to people all the time. One minute their loved one is there, and the next…gone. Wiped out. If this seems like a serious question to consider when we’re only talking about a horror movie then I’d beg to differ; Pumpkinhead takes the ‘what if?’ of human suffering and gives it a fantastical treatment, sure, but the relationship between the widowed father (Lance Henriksen) and his little boy is one of the most realistic and touching parental relationships I’ve seen in a movie, and it’s fundamental to the action which follows. It takes only a little detail and exposition to bring this about, too, in the capable hands of Winston and with the acting ability of Henriksen; one of the film’s earliest scenes, where the doting dad washes his son’s hands, telling him about how his grandmother used to wash his own hands when he was a little boy, is actually an ad lib. A simple enough thing, but one which reflects a spontaneity and warmth in this on-screen relationship, which makes what happens all the more appalling. You also gather a great deal about the isolation and vulnerability of these two; with no mother, Billy’s dad is everything to him, and vice versa. The prone, stand-alone shack where they live, somewhere in the rural South of the US, is symbolic in its own way. These two need each other. You don’t need to be a parent to feel the loss, when it comes.
And how does it happen? In another subtle touch, the event which kills Billy isn’t deliberate, and the callous actions which Harley assumes have taken place…haven’t. When a group of ‘city folks’ arrive in this tiny town with some dirt bikes in tow, a series of things happen. A father who needs to run an errand, a door left open, a little boy running after his dog, a guy on a bike who just doesn’t see the child, and – perhaps the only villain of this group – a man who wants to flee the scene and prevent the accident being reported. When Harley returns and sees his only child lying dead on the ground, he believes that the people responsible are wicked. They aren’t; they’re only flawed, panicked, like most people, and they’re not the mindless Spring Break types any more than the people they encounter in this rural area are simply hicks. From the point of the tragedy which leads Harley to take the extreme measures he does, nothing is quite as it seems.
But then, the society which Harley knows seems to operate by its own rules and, despite the 80s setting being kept intact, there are timeless codes and systems at play here. Nothing is as it seems at any point in this movie; Harley himself has to come to terms with a strange, repressed childhood memory of a man fleeing…something, and of this man pleading to get into his old family home; local children in the current day still tease one another with threats of Pumpkinhead, and – in his desperation, Harley is prepared to subvert natural order, to seek out this agent of revenge for his own purposes. Through and through, this is a movie heavily imbued with a pleasing sense of Southern Gothic, where the impossible is always possible.
Southern Gothic – in a nutshell, the ghosts, magic and supernatural of Europe transported, translated and transformed by new groups of people settling in new spaces – is a rich source of horror. In many ways recognisable, in many ways exotic, it’s the spirit of mystery and chaos spreading its hold over the bayous, the swamps and the thickets instead of the frozen forests and cold stone of Northern Europe. Pumpkinhead is an all-American revenant: his domain is amongst the close-knit communities which shelter, accept and acknowledge his power. Likewise, the monstrous witch who acts as his go-between is a witch of old, surrounded by the same mean creatures (the owl, the rat and the spider) which would have kept company with the weird sisters of Macbeth centuries before – but Ma Haggis is an all-American gal who knows ’em all, these people who (usually) keep a respectful distance but who all quietly know what she can do. Pumpkinhead may begin as a homunculus, fed with blood as per ancient notions of witchcraft, but it’s the blood of his neighbours he needs, and their needs he serves. The only catch is that nothing, once Pumpkinhead has appeared to wreak bloody havoc on whoever it is that has done something ‘real bad’, can dissuade him from destroying them. In many ways – in a series of developing ways – he is not an individual being, but rather an extension of the warped and brooding psyche of the person who called him up.
The demon himself is an interesting one: at first, his physical appearance seems very much influenced by Winston’s ground-breaking work on Aliens, by nature of its stature, its distended humanoid characteristics and its great strength. However, as the film progresses, Pumpkinhead – motivated by the thoughts and wishes of a man, remember – begins to strangely resemble the person who called him. Likewise, the tormented but flawed man himself begins to appear momentarily monstrous, even when he desperately wishes he had not done what he did. It’s an uncanny, and intensely dislikeable development, and one which adds layers to the symbolism here whereby we see what happens when one’s deepest, darkest desires are given tangible bodily form. Harley begins to fully understand the repercussions of summoning the demon too late to save himself. Throughout Pumpkinhead – and despite its bright, colourful, often painterly scenes – insult upon insult are added to the initial injury, meaning that this is a film which doesn’t go a bundle on providing respite, and this is true right up to the film’s closing scenes.
Sure, some of the scenes have dated a little during intervening years, and the heavier elements sometimes nudge into the sort of animated, involved tales children scare one another with, but I find it very hard to hold anything against this film with its well-paced, old-style storytelling, from a tradition before stories all ended with a ‘happily ever after’. Sometimes stories just end – but then, sometimes stories don’t have a clear beginning or an end, and Pumpkinhead holds onto evidence of this fact right until we, the audience, absolutely have to leave it behind. Harley is a good man, and a loving father. His little boy is a good kid, and the teens inadvertently responsible for his death are prevented from offering real help by circumstance, not malice. None of this means there’s joy to be had here. Once you open a floodgate, there is nothing you can do – and when that floodgate lets loose a tide of necromancy, cruelty and the literal embodiment of the darkest human impulses, “it’s gotta run its course”. Nothing – not God, which is one entity strangely absent from these dark hills, even in the ruined chapel which fails to prevent ol’Pumpkinhead from entering – and not man, can stop it, except by taking a step into the great unknown. And can God, then, offer aid to His children? As the film ends, with that one last devastating and upsetting final scene, we can only suppose that He can’t, either. There is a magic older than God in those hills, and it is this magic which ultimately holds sway, sweeping good men before it.